This invention relates to self-inking roller stamps.
Printing by applying ink to a raised printing surface and then pressing the inked surface to paper or another surface has been known for centuries. The printing surface is usually re-inked between impressions. A familiar way of re-inking is to incorporate an ink pad in a hand stamp and provide a mechanism for moving the printing surface back and forth from the ink pad to the paper. Or, the printing surface and its substrate can be made of microporous material, with the ink passing through to the printing surface from a backing reservoir. These methods are best suited to printing a single non-repeating pattern.
A continuous and repeating graphic can be printed by a printing surface arranged on a roller and inked by rolling the roller across an ink pad.